Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence E-Book

Algernon Charles Swinburne

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In the spring of 1864 the British poet, writer and playwright Algernon Charles Swinburne had the chance of spending many days in Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance, and in the Uffizi Gallery on the study of its several collections. He immediately realized that statues and pictures were ranged and classed, as all the world knows they are, with full care and excellent sense, but one precious division of the treasury was then unregistered in catalogue or manual. The huge mass of original designs, in pencil or ink or chalk, swept together by Vasari and others, had then been but recently unearthed and partially assorted. Under former Tuscan governments this sacred deposit has been left unseen and unclassed in the lower chambers of the palace, heaped and huddled in portfolios by the loose stackful. To this extraordinary and still little-known treasure Swinburne dedicated his essay Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence, one of the most beautiful art history essays ever written. A fundamental work to understand the secrets of artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Filippo Lippi, Giorgio Vasari, Sandro Botticelli, Andrea Mantegna and many others.

Leseprobe

SYMBOLS & MYTHS

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

NOTES ON DESIGNS OF THE OLD MASTERS

AT FLORENCE

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence

Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne

Publishing series: Symbols & Myths

Editing by Nicola Bizzi

ISBN: 979-12-5504-414-7

Cover image: Leonardo Da Vinci, L’Adorazione dei Magi, 1482

(Florence, Uffizi Museum)

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2023 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato - Italia

[email protected]

www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

INTRODUCTION BY THE PUBLISHER

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was a British poet, writer and playwright of the Victorian era. Active in the aesthetic circle, romantic and then decadent, he met Oscar Wilde and other famous intellectuals and artists of the same environment, attending the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and becoming a friend of the poet, artist and initiate Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Eccentric personality, with a strong taste for artistic provocation, inspired by writers such as the Marquis de Sade, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Baudelaire, his poetry was very controversial, due to its themes (sadomasochism, suicide, lesbianism, irreligiosity); his lyrics are also characterized by original versification solutions, by the cult of paganism and the idealized Middle Ages, and of absolute freedom. From 1903 to 1909 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. With Alfred Edward Housman, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Ernest Dowson and William Butler Yeats, he is considered one of the most representative lyric poets of Victorian literature. He died in Putney (London) on April 10, 1909.

Swinburne’s literary output is vast and includes poems, plays, songs, novels, short stories and essays on literary criticism. But Swinburne, close to the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, was also very involved in art and was a great expert in symbolism, especially the initiatory symbolism of Renaissance art.

In the spring of 1864 Swinburne had the chance of spending many days in Florence,the cradle of the Renaissance, and in the Uffizi Gallery on the study of its several collections. He immediately realized that statues and pictures were ranged and classed, as all the world knows they are, with full care and excellent sense, but one precious division of the treasury was then unregistered in catalogue or manual. The huge mass of original designs, in pencil or ink or chalk, swept together by Vasari and others, had then been but recently unearthed and partially assorted. Under former Tuscan governments this sacred deposit has been left unseen and unclassed in the lower chambers of the palace, heaped and huddled in portfolios by the loose stackful. To this extraordinary and still little-known treasure Swinburne dedicated his essay Notes on Designs of the Old Masters at Florence, one of the most beautiful art history essays ever written. A fundamental work to understand the secrets of artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Filippo Lippi, Giorgio Vasari, Sandro Botticelli and many others.

Nicola Bizzi

Florence, September 18, 2023.